How are koreans able to play under 10 ping?

It's their internet.

i had 8-13ms before Riot moved their servers out of southern california... now its 76 RIP.[cass-cry]

in the US the whole west coast is over 60

I'm in the Chicago area, and my ping has gone as low as 7 (only one time) but usually hovers around 9 and is pretty stable on ethernet.

I don't think Korean servers are throttled in terms of speed. In addition to that, their country is smaller in terms if size, so their connection to the server isn't as far (literally).

That's because Korea is a physically small. Meanwhile the distance from the sides of Europe and US is much greater.

That's why the Korean with the highest ping is still going to have it significantly easier than the case with Europe and US, because they're still going to be physically closer to their assigned server no matter what and thus less ping as a whole.

Most people live in the outskirts of Seoul where the lol Korea servers are likely located, and use fiber lines is why

I live in Ohio and my ping is usually 23, but now my internet provider is having issues with riot's servers and not allowing me to patch so.. at least ya'll get to play.[zombie-nunu-bummed]

I still have 16 ping, but I’ve seen Koreans with that 4 ping

yeah completely forgot about the range factor south korea is insanely small compared to eu and na the servers in eu are like 5k km's away from my spot and im usually around 35-40 ping still good but not as good as less than 10 respond time difference is huge.

because korea 1.is a tiny country and 2. has high bandwidth/high speed (actually high speed) internet throughout

Technically it has mostly to do with the number of routers you have to connect through to reach the server so in theory more efficient routes could be created on the internet that give people lower ping even at a greater distance.

NA and EU are physically big places with many people far away from the NA/EU servers respectively. I think those with good set ups in chicago (where the NA servers are) do have those tiny pings that dreams are made of.

Korea by contrast has everyone relatively close to the server, plus their whole infrastructure is pretty tight as I understand it.

I got 23 and my connection ain't even that good.